


unquiet meals

by Casylum



Category: The Great British Bake Off RPF
Genre: Bake-Off Gothic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-09-12 10:32:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16871320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Casylum/pseuds/Casylum
Summary: Nadiya goes out for the Bake-Off on a whim.





	unquiet meals

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gonergone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gonergone/gifts).



> written for [gonergone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gonergone) for [Yuletide 2018](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/yuletide2018)
>
>> Unquiet meals make ill digestions;  
> Thereof the raging fire of fever bred;  
> And what's a fever but a fit of madness?
> 
> —Aemelia, Shakespeare's _The Comedy of Errors_ , Act V, scene i. 

Nadiya goes out for the Bake-Off on a whim.

Well, less a whim and more a desire to prove to herself that the "amateur" in front of "baker" is much less important than the latter. Her husband is supportive, and so are the kids, who have treated her to at least six perfectly choreographed mock-ups of being presented Star Baker. It makes sense—they've been living off her cooking for years, and bragging about it to anyone who’ll listen—but she still can’t quite picture it for herself.

"I'm just as good as any of them," she tells herself the day of, nervously tucking in a loose fold of her headscarf, "and besides, I can't possibly be worse."

"Next," calls a disturbingly perky man of indeterminate age, headset nearly eclipsed by the afro of hair haloing his head. Nadiya brushes her hands down the sides of her pants, knocking off invisible dust, and follows the well-worn line of carpet to the interview room door.

~~~

"What are you making?" Mary Berry asks her for the first time, halfway through the audition process.

"Chocolate and orange croissants," Nadiya replies, gesturing to the slowly increasing disaster of her workspace. There's half-done chocolate ganache on the burner, oranges bare from being grated for zest, not to mention the fine film of flour that seems to have settled over everything.

"How lovely," Mary replies, slightly wistful. "You know, I haven't had a good croissant since the Blitz." Nadiya can't tell if she's joking.

Mary wanders off after that, heading towards the crafts table and the silver-topped form of Paul Hollywood in the distance.

~~~

The tent, when she makes it there, is bigger than she’d expected. Then again, it almost has to be, to fit twelve bakers, a shooting crew, and what amounts to about twelve kitchens, but she's still surprised by it.

Mel and Sue are arrayed in front of them in bright pops of cheerful color at the start, with Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood looming behind.

"Alright, bakers," Sue says brightly, pushing up the rim of her glasses. "Today we'll be making pie. Any kind: sweet, savoury, lattice, contemplative, you name it."

"Must be a full crust," Mel trills, "and watch your bottoms!"

Mary Berry smiles, and Nadiya can see echoes of burnt pastry and raw dough in the gaps between her teeth.

"Any advice, Paul?" Sue asks, just as a wind whips through the open end of the tent, strong enough to tug at the ends of her headscarf. Paul's hair doesn't move. Nadiya doesn't think he's blinked since the start of filming.

"Keep your flavours under control," he says, and the skin near his eyes cracks, ever so slightly.

"Thank you, Paul," Sue says, and then, "On your marks—"

"Get set!" Mel's hands go up, fingers shaking slightly. "Bake!" 

Her hands fall, and they scatter.

~~~

Nadiya comes dead center in the technical and doesn't know whether to laugh or cry.

"It's just beignets," she tells her husband over the phone, waiting for the train to take her back home for the night. "Like the ones you see in the pastry shops all the time. But the minute they said 'make this', it was like I'd never seen one in my entire life."

"You haven't," he says reassuringly. "Those are bagels in the shops, not beignets, remember?

"And besides, you didn't come last," he continues, voice crackling a bit through the receiver of his work phone. "So that's not bad at all, especially for a pastry you've never seen."

"Right," Nadiya says, but she can't quite shake the feeling that somehow, actually, she has.

~~~

"It's a real knot of a challenge."

Nadiya looks over at where Mel is standing at the edge of her bench. It's bread week, and her cinnamon-almond twist bread is looking hopelessly snarled.

Mel locks eyes with something through the camera, and stares unblinking for several moments before winking. She moves off once Colin, the cameraman working their side of the tent today, shifts over to film two counters down.

Somehow, even though no one's bake is in the oven yet, Nadiya can smell burning.

~~~

"I dream of that sandwich," Tamal says to the off-screen interviewer, a lovely person from Devon called Jan. "Love to have another like it some day."

He's smiling into the camera, eyes focused somewhere offside, the wrong spot to be looking at Jan and their bright orange jumper. There's a desperate look in them, like he's trying to stare someone on the other side of the room into turning around, see him, rescue him.

When Nadiya turns to look, all she can see is the window of the tent, fogged up by the heat.

~~~

She returns to the tent early Sunday morning.

There's a man there, a man she doesn't know. He's got black hair, terrible sideburns, and the loudest clothes she's seen on anything but a thrift shop mannequin or Jan. He's talking to one of the lighting folks like he belongs, a steaming mug of tea in hand, so Nadiya just shrugs internally and goes to hang up her coat.

When she turns 'round, she sees there's not a man or a lighting tech there at all, just Sue chatting comfortably with someone over from crafts. She blinks, and it's like Sue's edges waver, her glasses running down into hair, the navy of her coat going brighter and embroidered before snapping back.

Nadiya shakes her head, squeezes her eyes shut.

"Morning, Nadiya," Sue calls. "We start filming at half-past."

"Alright," she calls back, opening her eyes and blinking away the spots.

~~~

Ian's brought in a contraption of some sort, one that he claims can be used for baking, but, in Nadiya's opinion, looks rather more like a battering ram.

"It is," he says with a smile. His eyes are tight. "A 'battering' ram. Get it?"

Mel laughs from somewhere beyond them. Nadiya just blinks.

There are only four of them left.

~~~

The final is a rush of croquembouche, panna cotta, shepherd's pie, and sweet-and-savory tart-torte towers that are all in danger of melting, sagging, leaking, or collapsing.

She dashes around, dodging camerapeople, bakers, Mel, Sue, and the feeling that she's not baking what she ought to be.

"Happy, Nadiya?" Paul asks, during one of her brief moments of downtime, where all she has to do is roll out crust and pray the humidity holds.

She looks down at her hands, covered in flour, considers the last few months or so or her life, and says the only thing she can think of. "Happy, Paul?"

He laughs, and the kettle over at crafts whistles shrilly in counterpoint.

~~~

After the final's over, and Ian's been bundled away with the crystal serving plate clutched in shaking, disbelieving hands, Nadiya leaves the tent, and goes home.

~~~

When she wakes up, there's a voicemail blinking on her answering machine. It's the BBC. They say she's been selected for the Bake-Off, and could she please call them back.

For a moment, she feels a rush of something, like she's done this before, like she'll never do this again, like somehow she knows what it's like to face Mary Berry as she stares down into her soul and judges her profiteroles unworthy.

She almost says "no".

~~~

Nadiya enters the tent, and it all starts again.

**Author's Note:**

> based off the following prompt: "As it turns out, the eternal punishment for a certain type of person is being stuck in a tent baking incredibly obscure (possibly made up?) recipes and then judged harshly no matter how hard they try to perfect the bake. The bakers don't realize that it is a punishment, even though the game is rigged and they can't win. What happens when they figure it out?"
> 
> there's less figuring it out than requested, but i hope it otherwise passes muster! happiest of holidays to you, gonergone, & a wonderful new year!!


End file.
